Of Doctors and Lords
by ellylilly-pcmh
Summary: He saw her strolling around the village with this elegant and charming Lord. Deep inside his heart, he know he was loosing her - Set after the 4th Season Finale. Richard knew he was not the most sensitive of men, but he thought he had understand everything when he saw her happy with someone. With someone else. The last thing he needed was her confirming him hie worst suspicions.


**Premise #1: I do not like how things have developed between Lord Merton and Isobel in the season finale. I do not like them. I don't like Violet shipping them. I don't like Merton being such a good party for Isobel.**

**Premise #2: I know that I should finish the other story, ****_The Scottish Play_****, and I will, I promise, but I lost all the new chapters (****_again_****) when it broke the computer. A tragedy.**

**Premise #3: I hope to write and update this story frequently, but I assure you none - I live alone now, and my new university is fairly different from the last one!**

**Premise # 4: This story starts a few weeks after the season finale, so that Isobel and Merton have already got to know each other. As Romans said, ****_in media res_****.**

**Sorry in advance! And thank you for your attention!**

Firstly, Richard thought he was her brother, the far-away and long missed Edward J. Turnbull, the man who worked and lived in Manchester and often wrote her long and detailed letters, the man she often refer to when she told him something about new medical procedures while they worked at the hospital, long before young Mr. Crawley's death.

Secondly, he _hoped_ the man who was making her smile so happily and go out to walk almost every day since he had arrived, some weeks before, was _just_ her brother, because there was something in her behaviour that made him fear he was not Dr. Turnbull. Something in her bright smile that told him she was not smiling at her brother.

She was always smiling kindly to her new companion, something Richard had never managed to obtain from her since her son's death - he had conquered only a few small smiles, a dim memory of Isobel Crawley's contagious laugh.

He had seen them walking around the village, arm in arm, politely talking, smiling, laughing. He had seen her Family's appreciation at her new friend, an old acquaintances of theirs it seemed, and understood they will never accepted a modest doctor among them, not even if Isobel had accepted him first.

Finally, he was told from someone in the village - he could not even remember who dropped him the dreadful news, so big was the shock when he fully understood what the news implied - that the mysterious man who had so successfully managed to take back to life the mourning Isobel Crawley was, in fact, the rich, charming, tall, handsome, important and very honourable Lord Merton, also know as Victor Grey, as he was called among friends and acquaintances.

**oO°Oo**

He had thought that the worst thing was seeing her with another man, seeing her happy with someone else at her side. Of course he had never thought that things could get worse so incredibly in so little time.

Richard looked at her in complete disbelief, hoping he had heard her wrong, "You're leaving?"

"I am."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

"It is…" Isobel faltered, looking for the right word for some seconds, "Necessary."

Richard frowned: _why necessary?_ "I understand that living here in Downton is very difficult and painful for you, but…" a brand new though entered his mind and grown here, making him feeling unease, building up in his mind a blind sense of irrational terror, making his heart shiver with fear, "Aren't you leaving for good, are you?"

Isobel nodded curtly, "I think so."

"I see. Manchester?"

"London."

Again, Richard frowned in confusion: something here was missing, but he didn't understand what, and she was answering him so briskly, so coldly… "But your brother lives in Manchester, doesn't he?"

Her lips stretched into a thin line, "I've never said I'm going to live with my brother, or near him."

"I'm sorry, I thought you were about to move in with him and his family, I did not -"

"Lord Merton asked me to marry him," she interrupted him briskly, cutting him short with her now sharp voice, "And I accepted."

He was sure she had heard his heart cracked in the stunned silence of his office, as pathetic and sentimental the thought was. Certainly he had felt and heard it, a sudden pain in his chest, a blade through his chest, a cold shiver down his spine. He must had heard wrong. It was wrong. It had to. She can not just tell him she was going to get married to that stranger Lord, she can not be serious, she can not…

Yet she was. Standing in front of him at the other side of his desk in his office at the hospital, wearing a nice blue dress, her hair neatly pinned up, her elegant hand clutched together at her stomach, her expression serious and dark, almost angry, at him, at herself, at this Lord Merton, at life, he didn't know. Wearing on her face something resembling the fury that invaded her when they quarrelled about something. Was she expecting him to say something against her engagement? Surely not…

"I see, I… congratulations, I don't know what to say it… it's -" Richard cleared his throat, trying to catch breath, failing, standing away from the desk at which he had leaned heavily without realising it, "It's very sudden."

Even more sudden than her departure for France, years before, the first time he had truly risked to lose her.

"It is. He asked suddenly, I suddenly replied and -" she went silent from some second, straightened her back and threw him a cold glance, "I don't want to annoy you with the details."

He didn't think he could bear all the details. Not now. Not when he was losing her so abruptly, so cruelly.

"Not to worry about," he replied, as kindly as possible, trying to be the friend and colleague happy for her future, and not the distraught man in love with her, "When will you leave then?"

"In a week. Victor, Lord Merton, I mean, want to show me his houses before the wedding."

His houses. Not his modest, old cottage near his working-place. Did Lord Merton work at all? Richard doubted it. And who was he, Richard Clarkson, to tell to the independent Isobel Crawley to not get married to a rich, charming lord, and instead married a modest village doctor? She had already refused him once…

"I hope we'll see you around here again before your departure."

"I don't think so, doctor," she said moving through the door, followed by him; her answered took his breath away, and he realised this was a kind of good-bye, worse, a farewell, "We have so much to do that I don't think I'll be able to visit the hospital again."

"Then I think this is a good-bye," he cleared his throat when his voice failed him on the last word, and tried to smile politely, "A farewell."

At his few words, at his stiff voice and posture near her, Isobel looked at him, startled for the first time, as if she was perplexed by his sudden coldness; she tried to say something, thought better of it and closed her lips again. Slightly, she bowed her head to look at her hands, then her eyes were back to his blue ones, something like sadness written all over her face. It was such a sudden and complete change of attitude that Richard worried at once. Wasn't she happy about her future?

"A farewell, no. A good-bye, yes," she smiled at him for the first time, softly, and his worries only deepened, "I've had a good time here, at the hospital. Working with you made me realise I can still do something good. Thank you."

"Of course you'll still able to do something good, never doubt it," he held the heavy door of his office open for her, and she exited with a swirl of her long skirt, "We will all miss you."

"I will miss Downton too, doctor."

Downton. Not the hospital. Not _him_.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Crawley. I hope you all the good and the happiness in the world."

She firmly shook the hand he had outstretched for her and smiled at him, brightly, radiant, for the first time since she had told him about her imminent wedding the perfect image of an happy bride-to-be, "Thank you. I wish the same for you."

Richard smiled, ruefully, "I'll try to."

"Everything will be alright, doctor Clarkson. And if it's not alright, then it's not the end," she smiled at him, leaving his side and heading down the corridor to the exit, "A dear friend of mine told me once."

"Are you sure you're going to be happy with him?"

He was sure he had just murmured the words to himself, yet she heard them nevertheless. She stopped dead in her tracks, turned fully to face him and gave him one of the coldest glance he had ever seen her gave someone.

"Do I look like someone who easily take such decisions?"

"Of course not, I -"

"I will be happy. I am happy. As soon as I leave this place I'll be even happier. So yes, don't worry about me."

"I always worry about you," again, his words were just whispers, but in the luckily empty corridor the sounded hard and strong.

"You shouldn't. My husband will worry for me, not you," she almost snorted her own words, said them with a barely repressed anger, but he couldn't understand if she was angry with him - _probably_ - with herself - _but why?_ - or with Lord Merton and his proposal - _again, why?_ But he hoped, oh, he hoped!, it was the last one.

Yet she didn't seem to have changed her mind due to a sudden outburst of rage towards someone.

"Good-bye, doctor Clarkson."

"Good-bye, Mrs. Crawley."

He watched her leave the ward with a new, brisk pace, almost fuming because of his incautious words. He had been rude at least, asking her such questions, making her know he was still worried for her; but he had to; he was losing her for someone better than him, and he wasn't able to fully understand, nor accept, it.

"Farewell, Isobel."

**- R/R, please! Help me heal my wounded feeling after DA 4x08! -**


End file.
